Strategic tools for the practising manager

KIT

This week: The Indian toothpaste market

The size of the Indian toothpaste market is about Rs 2,500 crore.

Gradual taxation reforms in India since 1991 have lowered the excise duty rates to a reasonable 30 per cent, making these products more affordable.

The oral care market can be segregated into toothpaste (60 per cent), toothpowder (23 per cent) and toothbrushes (17 per cent).

The toothpaste market has been growing at around 4-5 per cent.

Per capita consumption of toothpaste is only 70 gm, compared with 300 gm in Europe and 150 gm in Thailand.

About 50 per cent of India's population uses toothpaste, around 27 per cent uses toothpowder, while the rest, mainly concentrated in rural areas, are yet to adopt oral care.

Colgate and Hindustan Unilever together account for over 85 per cent of the organised toothpaste market in India.

NUGGETS
Selections from management journals

Field service operations usually don't respond to conventional productivity-improvement programmes, because managers have difficulty coordinating the work of employees they can't see on the job.

A new approach relies on real-time data from the field to inform a dynamic dispatch centre that helps managers raise utilisation rates by identifying capacity in the workforce and reassigning field technicians. A flexible approach to scheduling work and an ambitious and realistic plan for booking it help to fill in available capacity.

Combined with a sophisticated approach to forecasting demand, these changes can dramatically improve productivity by raising the number of assignments that field technicians can undertake, reducing wait times, and improving customer service.

Improving field service productivity
By Timothy D Morse, Mitesh Prema and Jonathan Shulman
Web exclusive, July 2007
Read this article at www.mckinseyquarterly.com